The Longitudinal Interplay Between Attention Bias and Interpretation Bias in Social Anxiety in Adolescents

Background Cognitive biases are found to play a role in the onset and maintenance of social anxiety. However, particularly in adolescence, the link between different biases and their role in predicting social anxiety is far from clear. This study therefore investigated the interplay between attention bias and interpretation bias in relation to social anxiety in adolescence across three years. Methods 816 adolescents in grade 7 to 9 participated at three yearly waves (52.8% boys, M age grade7 = 12.60). Social anxiety was measured with a self-report questionnaire. Attention bias was measured with a visual search task with emotional faces. Textual vignettes assessed interpretation bias. Results Cross-lagged models showed that negative interpretation bias at grade 7 predicted an increase in social anxiety at grade 8. This effect was not found from grade 8 to 9. Attention bias did not predict social anxiety. Attention bias and interpretation bias were not longitudinally related to each other, nor did they interact with each other in predicting social anxiety. Conclusions Thus, no evidence was found for the Combined Cognitive Bias Hypothesis in social anxiety in adolescents. Instead, our results suggest that interpretation bias rather than attention bias contributes to the increase of social anxiety over time.